1. Comment #60620 by Riley on August 2, 2007 at 1:27 pm

I tried to link to the audio file and got this message:

"We're sorry. The content you requested is available for UK users only."

blimey.

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2. Comment #60622 by LeeC on August 2, 2007 at 1:36 pm

Damn...

Is someone able to re-post this file somewhere else so the rest of the world could listen?

Lee

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3. Comment #60627 by maton100 on August 2, 2007 at 1:48 pm

Click the "reposted from" link.

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4. Comment #60628 by admin on August 2, 2007 at 1:57 pm

Sorry about that, the link has been fixed.

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5. Comment #60636 by aoratos philos on August 2, 2007 at 2:46 pm

Josh keep an eye on your mailbox. Email from me in the next 30 mins. I'm just running off an mp3 conversion of the .ram file posted.

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6. Comment #60656 by troodon on August 2, 2007 at 3:56 pm

Imagine - no religion. Imagine a world where our best scientists would be able to devote all their working time to original science and inspiring the public, without having to fight the religious nutcases threatening to drag us back into the dark ages.

Someday maybe. In the meantime, our civilization takes number one priority and I'm grateful to scientists like RD for taking up the fight. But as I listened to this interview I kept thinking what a treat it was to hear RD discussing science again, answering thoughtful original questions from people such as Eugenie Scott. I read The Selfish Gene about 30 years ago and remember how it opened my mind to the wonders of evolution.

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7. Comment #60657 by bockman on August 2, 2007 at 3:57 pm

aoratos, could I trouble you for a c.c. on that mp3?

david(.)bockman(@)gmail.com (remove parenthesis)

Thank you if you can,
Dave

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8. Comment #60659 by BicycleRepairMan on August 2, 2007 at 4:00 pm

Josh keep an eye on your mailbox. Email from me in the next 30 mins. I'm just running off an mp3 conversion of the .ram file posted.

Thats cool, If anyone could post this on YouTube (or google video, or dailymotion) as well, it would be much appreciated. Yes, I know it sounds counter-intuitive to post an audio-file in video format, but there is actually alot of good audio there(on YT) and I can also post it on VideoSift, which by the way, is an excellent site, a sort of Youtube for mature people who doesnt want to waste endless hours on video diaries.. Its a video democracy/natural selection site where only the strongest survive :) http://www.videosift.com

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9. Comment #60674 by Crazymalc on August 2, 2007 at 4:28 pm

He must be stoked to be talking about Science again and not so much about the whole god thing

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10. Comment #60679 by Yorker on August 2, 2007 at 4:45 pm

Refreshing, almost no religion, a welcome change, at least for me.

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11. Comment #60681 by Yorker on August 2, 2007 at 4:53 pm

8. Comment #60659 by BicycleRepairMan

That videosift link was a good move. I'd never seen Bill Hicks so worked up before on that clip you posted. I liked Bill, pity he died so young, what killed him, do you know?

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12. Comment #60686 by Zaphod on August 2, 2007 at 5:15 pm

To Yorker

Bill Hicks had Pancreatic cancer.

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13. Comment #60732 by robotaholic on August 2, 2007 at 7:00 pm

I get all excited when I see a new Richard Dawkins video or hear a new sound clip. Oh yes, hearing him talk science really makes me feel like he's a great scientist-and THAT is the best compliment you can get from me-

It drives me crazy that scientology gets to use the word science in it's name. arggh -

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14. Comment #60806 by LDmiller on August 2, 2007 at 10:15 pm

In the course of this program the topic of genetic engineering came up, and Dr Dawkins stated that just about every type of animal except humans had been genetically manipulated via the selection portion of Darwinian evolution. (This was in the context of a statement concerning that we are only now starting to manipulate the mutation part.)

Alas, Dr Dawkins is incorrect on this. Humans were in fact bred for certain characteristics: I refer to slaves in the antebellum South in the US.

Importation of slaves into the US was prohibited after 1808 (this is part of our Constitution), and even before that it had become economically very profitable to breed slaves on plantations in the deep South rather than import them. (The death and disease rates associated with the Atlantic crossing made it so.)

In the 50 years between the 1808 prohibitiion and the Civil War there were in fact human breeding farms, and the slaves were bred in precisely the same way that one would breed prize horses or cattle or dogs, etc. Furthermore, there were slave markets where they were bought, sold and traded.

This went on for long enough that there are still phenotypical differences between American and African blacks that far exceed what you would expect from the length of time that the American population was isolated from the African ones. (Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor (I forget which) commented on in a stand-up routine; he had noticed the differences when he visited his ancestral home in Africa.)

The existence of these "human breeding farms" was famously novelized by a writer named Kyle Onstott in the late 1950's, in which he depicts a particular plantation over a number of generations. There were several senationalized novels (which were fiction, but based on historical data), and one of them was made into a movie: "Mandingo".

Oddly, this was done in an area of the United States where resistance to the ideas of evolution have been (and are now) the strongest.

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15. Comment #60831 by wezza_ on August 3, 2007 at 12:49 am

Good Interview,
It's good to hear Dawkins talking more as scientist, which he sort of had to depart from when touring for the god delusion.

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16. Comment #60833 by socratzsche on August 3, 2007 at 12:55 am

LDmiller, I believe you're referring to artificial selection.

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17. Comment #60937 by jesus_christ_himself on August 3, 2007 at 6:36 am

I've got an mp3 of Dawkins talking at the Edinburgh Literary festival a couple of years ago, before the GD came out. How do I post it on this site?

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18. Comment #60961 by waxwings on August 3, 2007 at 7:20 am

LDMiller, pity you weren't on hand to call in to the Dawkins interview and mention that.

I'd be interested to learn more about these breeding programs though my immediate reaction was 1) there couldn't have been a great deal of time for the selection to take effect and 2) I would imagine that, although such 'breeding farms' existed, they were not widespread enough for their effects to alter the entire slave population (or surely we'd have heard more about them) and 3) post slavery abandonment of such programs would have quickly minimized any of the effects bred into the affected people.

Anyone have any more information on this stuff? I could find shockingly little on this topic. One would think that such programs, horrible as they were, would provide unique opportunities for scientists.

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19. Comment #60991 by BicycleRepairMan on August 3, 2007 at 9:13 am

I've got an mp3 of Dawkins talking at the Edinburgh Literary festival a couple of years ago, before the GD came out. How do I post it on this site?

Attach it to an email and send it to contact@richarddawkins.net . alternatively, you can post it on a place like http://www.yousendit.com and put a link to it in a post here..

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20. Comment #61016 by LDmiller on August 3, 2007 at 10:30 am

socratzsche

LDmiller, I believe you're referring to artificial selection.

True, but the biology is the same.

Waxwings

Good points. I think that there could have been a number of generations in a few cases, as slavery went on for almost 300 years, and the lifetimes of slaves were much sorter than average (I once read that 7 years of work life was par). As to whether the traits bred for would die out, that would depend on whether they were recessive, etc. And plantations were totally isolated as far as the slaves were concerned.

The reason that there is so little on this is that it is so un-PC. Pity, as it might give scientists some idea of how fast evolution can proceed.

There are other examples (also very un-PC unless you happen to be a social worker) of isolated populations in the US. For example, in WW2 all of the caucasian men were in the military services. Henry Kaiser needed men to build ships, so he went into the South and recruited substantial numbers of black men for this. They settled in what can only be described as a ghetto in east Oakland, CA. With them came some unfortunate genes that rapidly spread in this population, and as a result there is a significant number of mentally retarded people there. Mustn't talk about it, of course, but the truth of the matter is obvious to any public administrator or social worker who has to deal with it. (As a youth I dated a social worker who worked in this problem area. What a downer!)

In many ways, PC and religion are similar, especially in the area of privileged treatment.

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21. Comment #61043 by Riley on August 3, 2007 at 12:09 pm

BicycleRepairMan wrote:
I can also post it on VideoSift, which by the way, is an excellent site, a sort of Youtube for mature people ...

I followed the link to http://www.videosift.com and the top video on the front page of the VideoSift site was:

"Penis lifts tombstone" !!!

LOL !!!

(but I do appreciate the site as an alternative to YouTube, thanks!)

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22. Comment #61050 by L.Minnik on August 3, 2007 at 12:34 pm

sorry, but what does un-PC stand for?

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23. Comment #61052 by Riley on August 3, 2007 at 12:42 pm

Just as our bodies are "merely survival machines that genes have built for their own purpose", could it also be said that genes are just the mechanism which organic molecules have built for their own purpose?

Similarly, but from the top down, could it be said that our bodies are merely survival machines that our social institutions have bred for their own purpose?



Are all these perspectives equally valid? If so, where does it end? If not, why not?

- very curious.

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24. Comment #61059 by Dr Benway on August 3, 2007 at 1:34 pm

Riley:

Are all these perspectives equally valid?

To answer your own question, ask, "What is the replicator?" A replicator is a unit of information capable of making exact copies of itself, given the right equipment.

Factories may produce widgets without widgets being replicators. Likewise, cells can produce nucleic acids, but this doesn't make nucleic acids replicators.

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25. Comment #61090 by Riley on August 3, 2007 at 2:53 pm

Well, I think an Adenine molecule cooperates with other molecules to reproduce copies of itself. So my answer is, yes. What do you think?

Also, I didn't think that making "exact" copies was necessary. In fact I thought that inexact replication was the basis for evolution.


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26. Comment #61117 by jesus_christ_himself on August 3, 2007 at 6:03 pm

http://download.yousendit.com/5A4E655B7CAF7A45

A recording of Dawkins at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2005. It lasts for about 50 minutes.

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27. Comment #61307 by BathTub on August 4, 2007 at 2:19 pm

WOLD? ;)

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28. Comment #64500 by HFK on August 20, 2007 at 9:36 am

Is there any chance jesus_christ_himself could magic up a new link to the Edinburgh festival as its expired, I'd be mighty disapointed if this miracle cannot be performed.

Thanks

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29. Comment #70807 by TeapotTheist on September 17, 2007 at 1:17 am

Is there any chance jesus_christ_himself could magic up a new link to the Edinburgh festival as its expired, I'd be mighty disapointed if this miracle cannot be performed.

Bump...
Any chance?

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